ABSTRACT
Realism at the Fin De Siècle became a topic of heated literary and cultural debate as a new generation of realist writers in England, France, Germany, Russia, Scandinavia, and the United States took on topics and ideas that had previously been considered fit for public discussion, let alone mass publication. Shocking plot points or characters were not new to literature, of course, but the difference of 1880s and 1890s realism lay in the directness and social reformist impulse with which taboo topics were treated. Earlier novels portrayed their protagonists as complex individuals within their own environments rather than examples of an oppressed class or type of people, and they only suggested, rather than flagrantly displayed, matters of sexuality. Realist and naturalist dramas with a focus on sexual themes entered the European theater scene at the same time, most notably through the work of Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, whose influential works stirred up an international controversy about “Ibsenism”.
